


Once

by returntosaturn



Series: Needle [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Death, F/M, Newt-centric, leta-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 01:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10504047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: "He’d always been good at it, good at unruffling her and calming her when a wild spark stirred in her. Now he holds her, lets her be embraced just once more before this verse that has spanned three decades is finally over for them."// Newt, Leta, and Tina at the battle at Nurmengard. Author's conjecture about how these events happen. Not canon necessarily. Character death.





	

England, 1913

_She is a bronzed statue staring to the horizon, a hand shielded over her eyes. Her hair is pulled up in a wiry, wild top knot, and on her ears are a pair of tinted glasses she’d lifted from her father’s wardrobe._

_He stares openly from his place on the beach, surrounded by a circle of shells he’d plucked from the strand, like a fairy ring about his knees._

_She turns, her smile dazzling in the sharp noon sun and only for him, before she runs and lands in his lap, laughing and leaning against his knees._

_He glances for the little cottage not far off inland, searching for any sign of life on the veranda that might be watching them inconspicuously. But there’s no one._

_“How far away do you think the horizon really is?” she ponders, cracking open an intact set of shells before he can stop her._

_“A few kilometers I suppose,” he answers, reaching for her wrist if only to distract her movements._

_“So close?” She drops the fragmented clam carcass back into the sand._

_“Scientifically speaking, of course.”_

_She huffs, inching a little closer. “You’re always speaking scientifically.”_

_She is inclined too close for his comfort now. Not that he particular minds the proximity, but its distracting. It makes the constant flow of his thoughts hiccup, and if her father saw…_

_Before he can comment, her gaze is drawn to the water once more, and he watches the little whisps of hair that curl about her neck._

_“I think it’s far away. Farther than you could ever travel. So far that you’d never reach it no matter how long you sailed.”_

_He thinks on this. Of course she is speaking metaphorically. Her line of thinking always ran along the dark and obscure, but if one were to look hard enough, they’d find a little hope scribbled here and there. Hope that was assumed undeserved, but hope nonetheless._

_“Perhaps it is closer than you think,” he says quickly, and leans to give her a kiss on her cheek._

_“You!” she shrieks and chases after him when he leaps up and bounds into the foam, swatting a small wave of saltwater back in her direction._

_They tumble into the brine together, laughter mingling and dampened in the quick wind, unobserved from the little house on the sea._

-

Nurmengard, 1945

Leta is beside him, and Dumbledore is near. A familiar figure and her telltale brown bob is silhouetted meters away, and for these reasons, nothing should be amiss to him.

Except the slew of spells and dirt and shouting—screaming—all around them.

The beach smells of gunpowder and sweat, suffocated in the weight of smoke and fog and ash that hangs in the air and does not move.

The dark tower of Nurmengard taunts them from where it juts ahead of them, a hollow idol set there to watch the battle that has exploded on its shores.

Leta clamps a hand at his arm and drags him down, forcing him to dodge a spell that would’ve certainly taken his shoulder. And then she shoves him away, springing like a jaguar to engage the attacker, green and yellow light spewing rapid-fire from the end of her wand.

Newt is taken off guard when he lifts his gaze to scout for Tina, and misses a spell that sends him spinning back and landing hard.

Blidly, he fires a stunning spell. 

He is still, holding, waiting for the next move.

He hears Leta’s shouting and groaning with effort, the rumble of magic that shakes the ground. Something crackles and expands and he glances up to see her wandlocked with a wizard twice her size. He twists his aim, just the slightest movement.

And then there’s a stillness. 

Not a stillness in the battle that keeps roaring on about them unhindered. But a stillness that lasts one single second, as Leta doubles at the waist, is propelled backwards, and lands with a force that makes the earth under his boots thunder.

Her dress ripples striped red over her calves like a ruined flag.

Heedless of all else, Newt sprints, and yet seems to move slow against an unseen current.

He collapses at her side, wand clattering to the ground like an offering before her as his hands take her in.

She still breathes, and blood bubbles sickly from her mouth when he jostles her. 

Her eyes are dark, boring at his face and features like she’s appraising him. Like she is both judge and jury.

He gasps apologies and secrets and vain words that might convince her to stay. But she’s already half a world away. She always has been, just out of his reach, just on the cusp of his understanding. Wild enough to excite him, mysterious enough to scare him. Now she’s sailing further away and he is helpless to moor her. He’d always been good at it, good at unruffling her and calming her when a wild spark stirred in her. Now he holds her, lets her be embraced just once more before this verse that has spanned three decades is finally over for them.

Finally, finally a shine sets into her eyes that seals her away, and he doesn’t have to watch her measuring gaze any longer. There is no light to reflect this new empty, wide stare but the sparks and streaks shooting from wands around them like sardonic fireworks.

He cradles her head in both hands, bringing her face to nestle against his shoulder, silently willing that her lips would move. A hot intake of breath, a kiss, anything…

But there’s nothing. There won’t be any more…

Her hair stains like damp wool when his tears spill over, and he burries his face into it, breathing in soap and new parchment and tangy gunpowder, the salty sea breeze from a place miles and miles away.

He presses his lips together against the weight of something akin to a roar building in his chest, and just holds her.

He touches the sash in her hair, the ruffle at her collar, the crown of her head.

He's there when hands press and then pull at his back, clawing around his ribs while his fists clutch at her dress.

Distantly, there's a familiar voice. A bright voice that tweaks something in his consciousness he isn't ready to engage yet. 

He is forced to lose grip and fall back, colliding with the hard line of a body behind him. A warm someone, textured in a wool cardigan and soft cotton. 

Warm. Present. Home.

_newt oh morrigan oh god_

He leans into her, turns against her, sobs loudly into her shirt without abashment. His instincts take over and try to internalize it all until he shakes with the effort of it.

Her fingers thread his hair and hold him fast. Her voice is clearer, closer when she whispers soothing phrases like discordant lines of poetry.

He’s numb when she coaxes him to his feet and carries him with one arm around her neck like a wounded soldier to a crevice of rock and bends before him to shuck up the leg of his trousers, revealing a fleshy wound he doesn’t remember obtaining. While she works at his feet with her wand, he realizes the blood on his hands isn’t his.

Tenuous. Cunning. Alluring. Leta.

_hey look at me keep your eyes on me_

She reaches, gripping his chin in one sure, yet shaking hand. She chants encouragements over and over, but her efforts are unmet with a response. He just stares, gaping as the world tilts before his eyes. 

Her expression changes., lips curling and quivering, and its followed by a string of apologies. There’s a gash over her eye, specks of blood at a split in her lip. Spellfire is all around them, detonating and flinging dirt and sand and rock. It is louder than her quivering voice that tries to remain so brave.

Brave. Stern. Tender. Tina.

_i’m so sorry newt i’m so...._

She hides her face in the crook of her arm when she releases him, and he doesn’t allow himself to register the sound of her sob against her sleeve. But he sees the weight of it. Watches haplessly as it moves through her, shoulders snapping back like…seashells.

She heaves, three hiccupping breaths that render her stable enough to murmur something about safety and quiet and away from here it’ll be alright you’ll be alright just hold on.

He lets her grip his collar, haul him forward, shoulders sagging helplessly, arms splayed like a ragdoll. He welcomes the tight nip of Apparition. Where they go, he does not care. As long as it is away from the beach where her body lies forgotten and empty, a symbol of the costs of this war. A powerful, exuding figure reduced to a tumbled statue. Perhaps, he hopes, as the air crackles with their departure, he can remain stuck in the tight conduit of whatever continuum she fits them into and allow its embrace to hold together his pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> ( @allscissorsallpaper on tumblr )


End file.
